sam kalantari

Sam Kalantari was born in 1976 in Tehran, he is considered to be the fourth generation of Iranian documentary filmmakers. At the same time as he entered university he began professional photography as well. While studying civil engineering he also attended freelance classes for filmmaking.

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In 2000, while graduating from the university and making his first short film “The Unknown Desire” (Tamanaye Mjhoul), he entered the realm of Iran’s professional filmmaking scene.“The unknown desire “with its first international presence in in year 2001, received honorary diploma for the best short movie from the Uruguay's Tenth International Children’s Film Festival (Montevideo).
After this movie and while establishing the Institute for development of Notion Cinema , Sam has focused more on making documentaries, the important achievements of this institute can be pointed out as the movies under the names of “ Friday was a bad day” ( joint production with France) and “ From No. 37”.
In year 2009, the same time as the end of the shooting of movie “My Heart Is Full of Puppets”, he left to Dublin for continuing his studying in filmmaking field. From his activities during this period, we can point to his Stage Lighting in the play “I Kiss You and Tear” – which has been directed by Mohammad Aghebaty. This play is a narration from the episode of the life of the first president of the Czech Republic ( Vaclav Havel), which has been played at the same time as his birthday in Berlin at Czech House of Culture.
After finishing his studies and returning to Iran and while becoming member of two associations of Iranian documentary filmmakers and producers of Iranian documentary, he finished the “ From No.37” film, the research, writing and production of which has continued for many years. This is to be mentioned that this film is the first long documentary on Sadegh Hedayat, famous Iranian writer, according to many experts of the field until today this film is the most complete work from the life of this great worldwide writer.
From 2010, besides filmmaking activities, Kalantari has paid more attention to his activities in The Iranian Alliance for motion pictures as well. In the beginning he worked as the Inspector of the "Association of Producers of Iranian documentary" and then became one of the members of the board of the directorate of this association.
During recent years in addition to his activities in the associations, he worked further on the research of documentaries and received the nomination of Crystal Simorgh for the best “ Research” for the film of “Memories for all Seasons” from Tehran 32nd Fajr Film Festival.